Where the Nurses are Pretty and the Doctors are Pissed

a few days ago nursemyra was telling you about falling vaginas according to Frederick Hollick. Fred was very interested in vaginas and the fearful things that could go wrong with them like hydrometra.

“one surgeon records a case where 85 pounds of fluid was evacuated from the womb, and another informs us he found the organ, after death, large enough to contain achild 10 years of age!

another disease, supposed by some to exist was called physometra, or wind in the womb. Many curious accounts are given of this affliction but they are generally looked upon as fabulous. One tells of a woman who had long been sick with symptoms similar to hydrometra, from whose womb there escaped a kind of bag or bladder, full of wind or gas, which bounded on the floor!

and then there were the dreaded cases of “hydatids”……

“there is often a copious discharge of water from the vagina when a hydatid bursts. Dr John clark knew a lady to who this happened while sitting in an eating house, and she literally deluged the floor. This disease is often combined with a pregnancy, or with a mole, and rarely appears alone.

*Fred’s book, The Diseases of Women, was written in 1874. Thankfully medical science has come a long way since then as I suspect most men would not care to share their chosen vagina with a mole……

There’s not much of a story behind this t shirt except that it belonged to Stephen. It’s one of the items of clothing that I keep sealed in a plastic bag in the hope that it will retain some of his smell and so far I think it has, though it’s grown fainter. Anyway, I think Unfuck the World is a great sentiment… any ideas on how to achieve it?

not sure if others are joining in t shirt friday this month, but if you are, leave a note in the comments and I’ll link back to you. Silverstar’s is up.

Breaking News: We have two new entrants this week: my secret crush, RenalFailure and Olga’s Mistress, sporting something very sweet, sugary and snappy.

Frederick Hollick wrote a marriage guide that included basic descriptions of the genitals. He uses the old fashioned term Mons Veneris when he talks about the pubic area and his word for pubic hair was tressoria.

“The covering of hair was formerly called tressoria, amd its absence was universally regarded as a reproach. In fact, it was customary to order it to be cut off, in open court, in ancient times, when a female was detected a third time in illicit intercourse. It is also liable to fall off after certain diseases or after taking powerful drugs, and will even turn colour after fright or severe agitation.

When discussing the labia majora he says the lips commence at the pubic bone then descend within an inch and a half of the fundament.

image by namio

“They are united together both above and below and their union below is called the fourchette or fork. Immediately within the outer lips are the labia minora. In some females these can grow to an extraordinary size and it becomes necessary to remove them. The labia minora are, in many persons, singularly sensitive and appear to be the principal parts in which sexual excitement is felt. When they are unusually large or irritable that excitement becomes so overpowering that it cannot be controlled and is really a species of madness which irresistibly impels the individual to seek gratification regardless of consequence.

Speaking of the clitoris he compares it to the male penis, capable of being engorged and highly sensitive.

“When it is unduly developed or excitable, the sexual propensity often becomes irresistible causing nymphomania or Furore Uterinus which leads to moral delinquency. If a female, in ancient time, was detected a fourth time in illicit intercourse, the clitoris was amputated in open court.”

Frederick Hollick was dedicated to his work and made it a point to study vaginas very carefully.

this is not Fred

“as a general rule the vulva is higher up or more in front in white females than it is in coloured races. The vagina is shorter and smaller with rounder firmer lips. There is also less tressoria and a smaller clitoris. These differences I have taken great trouble to ascertain for myself.”

Francine Gottfried was a data processor on Wall Street back in the 60s. Her 43-25-37 inch figure had men in a frenzy during a bizarre two week period when up to 15,000 people waited outside the stock exchange to catch a glimpse of her taking a lunch break.

Different cultures find different aspects of the body sexually attractive. The Wogeo think breasts should be firm with the nipples facing outwards. Other cultures like long and pendulous breasts.

In many societies, elongated labia majora are considered erotically appealing. Young girls are advised to pull the clitoris and the vulvar lips to enhance their sex appeal. Before puberty, girls on Ponape undergo treatment designed to lengthen the labia minora and to enlarge their clitoris. Impotent old men pull, beat, and suck the labia to lengthen them. The girls put black ants in their vulva so that their stinging will cause the labia and clitoris to swell.

Herter, in 1974, gave young men this advice about the following basic assets they should look for in a wife. She should:

1. Be beautiful.

2. Be younger than you.

3. Be shorter than you.

4. Be the same religion.

5. Be the same race.

6. Be willing to pretend to be equally intelligent or less intelligent than you.

7. Be a virgin at the time you meet.

8. Be willing to live with you for a year before marriage to see if things work out.

9. Be willing to let you participate in the sports you like.

10. Be tolerant of the work you do; be tolerant of your ambitions and abilities.

Henry T. Finck (1887) was the first early psychologist to pose a theory of beauty. Humans started out, he thought, exceedingly ugly. But humankind continued to evolve, becoming more perfect, better-looking, all the time. Finally, evolution and good looks reached a pinnacle in the upperclass English gentleman.

Finck itemized each trait—the feet, limbs, waist, chest, etc.— and explained why the Victorian gentleman surpassed all others in beauty appeal and in doing so managed to insult every ethnic group.

The Hungarians are “of a repulsive ugliness in the eyes of all their neighbors.”

Eva Bartok

“The typical Jew is certainly not a thing of beauty. The disadvantages of genuine separation are shown not only in the long, thick crooked nose, the bloated lips, almost suggesting a negro, and the heavy lower eyelid, but in the fact that the Jews have proportionately more insane, deaf mutes, blind, and colour-blind” than other Europeans.

“The women of France are amongst the ugliest in the world”

Finck also gave advice on avoiding rouge and learning to kiss properly. “A lover should not hold his bride by the ears in kissing her. A more graceful way, and quite as effective in preventing her from getting away, is to put your right arm around her neck, your fingers under her chin, raise the chin, then gently but firmly press your lips on hers. After a few repetitions, she will find out it doesn’t hurt and become as gentle as a lamb.”

Thallium is a heavy metal that was once used as a therapeutic agent to treat syphilis, gonorrhea, tuberculosis, and ringworm, and was also used as a depilatory for excess hair. Marketed under the name Koremlu, when applied to the upper lip to remove an incipient moustache, it instead produced alarming effects such as baldness, foot pain, nausea, vomiting, cramps, dizziness and numbness of the lower extremities.

The CIA planned to embarrass Fidel by sneaking thallium salts into Castro’s shoes; thallium salts are a “potent depilatory that would cause his beard, eyebrows, and pubic hair to fall out… like a follicle deprived Samson.”

Upon learning that Castro enjoyed scuba diving, the CIA purchased a diving suit and contaminated the regulator with tuberculosis bacilli. They also treated the suit itself with fungus spores that would cause the rare skin disease, madura foot.

this attempt failed, but undaunted and still intrigued with the scuba diving idea, another plan was hatched to place an exploding conch shell at one of Castro’s favorite diving spots. This was scrapped as being too unwieldy and impractical, as even the most casual observer might have suspected foul play.

“Perhaps the most visionary proposal came from the fertile mind of General Edward Lansdale, who supervised the Kennedy administration’s covert war on Castro. The general hoped to spark a counterrevolution by spreading the word to devout Cuban Catholics that the Second Coming was imminent and that Castro was none other than the anti-Christ. At the appointed hour, Christ Himself would surface off the shores of Cuba aboard an American submarine as star shell flares illuminated the heavens. In a pique of Cold War rapture, it was hoped, the Cubans would rise up and spontaneously overthrow their satanic leader.”

aren’t you glad you live in an era when you can just pop a pill to get rid of worms? nursemyra has been looking at old time remedies and home remedies for ridding the body of parasites…..

The pin-worm, inhabits the rectum, and may be destroyed by injecting into it a strong solution of salt, or decoction of aloes, and when it is allowed to pass away, the rectum should be anointed with vaseline, butter, or lard. (This immediately makes me think of Last Tango in Paris)

The real cause of intestinal worms is faulty living. The eggs, taken into the human body through food and water, can breed in the intestines only if they find there a suitable medium for their propagation. This medium is an intestinal tract clogged with morbid matter.

Garlic has been used from ancient times by the Chinese, Greeks, Romans, Indians, and Babylonians for expelling intestinal worms. Both fresh garlic and its oil are effective. One method of administration was to place a couple of cloves fresh garlic in each shoe. As the person walked, the cloves got crushed, and the worm-killing garlic oil was absorbed by the skin and carried by the blood into the intestines easily, as it possessed a powerful penetrative force.

The seeds of ripe pumpkin are useful in intestinal worms, especially tapeworms. One tablespoon of the seeds should be peeled and crushed, and then infused in 250 ml of boiling water and drunk. It is necessary to first fast for a day and empty the intestines by taking the juice of boiled dry prunes.

An infusion of the wormwood herb can be prepared by mixing 2 ml of wormwood oil in 120 ml of water, and be given as an enema for killing worms in the rectum.

Diatomaceous earth is a powder that can be mixed with any beverage. It’s very fine earth that is ground up small and it won’t harm humans but is deadly to worms. The jagged edges of the granules act like razor blades that literally hack the worms to pieces inside of you. Mix a tablespoon of the powder in any beverage and drink it once a day for a few days (tastes a little like dirt, but not too bad).

Eat a few tomatoes in the morning on an empty stomach to throw out the worms. Eat only raw pineapples forthree days to kill tapeworms.

click/enlarge to see the pineapple hairdo

recently, scientists have been studying the use of worms as an actual cure. It is possible that drinking the eggs of a certain type of worm can help fight against the effects of multiple sclerosis. And here Dr Michael Eades writes about combatting the nasty but very clever guinea worm with the help of ex US President, Jimmy Carter. This story is not for the squeamish.

I seemed to be having more camera trouble than usual tonight. couldn’t get a good shot of the black corset beneath the babydoll and also had a problem with the flash highlighting seam marks from the bra I’d just removed for the photo shoot. In the end I gave up trying and opened a bottle of red instead…..

At every stage of male development from boyhood to the decrepitude of old age sexual excess in myriad forms can derail health, lead to impotence and disease, and even kill. The boy who masturbates before puberty damages his nervous system, since sex always shocks the brain’s delicate tissues, but the adolescent suffers even more.

If the youth fails to overcome his “vicious propensities,” he will suffer “the haggard expression, the sunken eye, the long, cadaverous-looking countenance, the downcast look which seems to arise from the dread of looking a fellow-creature in the eye and a permanent loss of intellectual ability. In some rare cases, a boy will be so overwhelmed by his passions that he masturbates himself to death.

poor old freddie mercury

The afflicted youth should be “taught to look upon masturbation as a cowardly, selfish, debasing habit “and encouraged to pursue “manly amusements compatible with health.” If the combination of exercise and shaming leads to the cessation of the “evil habit,” the patient’s system will rally, although his intellectual functions may never fully recover.

New dangers lurk in adulthood. Early marriage is a good antidote for sexual desire, and it allows a man to fulfill his mission as master of his household, but even marital intercourse can be taken too far. Acton never quite said how much sex is good – presumably it depended on the strength of a man’s constitution – but he repeatedly warned that three times a week is way too often

The treatment of spermatorrhea seems to have been Dr William Acton’s specialty. He developed an elaborate course that began with a cessation of excessive sex and a diet that sharply limited meat andalcohol, but favored stale bread. Beyond sexual and dietary restrictions, Acton recommended daily baths, exercise, cold enemas, and a hard mattress. If this regimen did not suffice, Acton was ready with a more extreme measure: chemical cautery of the urethra.

Warning: don’t read this next paragraph if you have a weak constitution or if your name is daddypapersurfer

A tube was inserted into the patient’s urethra and a caustic solution was injected via syringe, all withoutthe benefit of anesthesia. The operation burned the lining of the entire urethra, and Acton was happy with the results. “I very rarely have occasion to repeat the procedure,” he wrote. It seems that after one urethral cautery, his patients never complained about spermatorrhea again.

In Acton’s opinion, a penisimproperly deployed is as dangerous as a pistol in the hands of a novice.

a prolapsed womb used to be (and sometimes still is) treated by the insertion of pessaries. They were made from metal, wood, ivory, horn, wax, leather or glass. A globe pessary, in the shape of a perfect sphere, was usually made of silver, gilt or gold. Others were egg shaped or oval. Ring pessaries were made of glass, wood or rubber, were inserted edgeways, then turned horizontally. So were the Figure 8 type, though they were less popular as “they were easily deranged and liable to many objections.”

A Stem pessary was attached to a bandage passing between the legs and then attached to a belt around the waist. It had many advantages such as being difficult to dislodge unlike some of the others which would fall out of the body as the woman walked, coughed or sneezed.

Another method of dealing with prolapses was for the woman to stay off her feet altogether and to remain lying down with her pelvis higher than her shoulders for a month or more at a time.

Curiously, there was once a case reported where a prolapse was so severe that civil authorities forced a woman to wear men’s clothing, convinced that the hanging organ was a masculine attribute. The celebrated Saviard was able to reduce it to a point where her womanhood was no longer in doubt. Another reported cure, presumably only attempted by younger women, was for them to stand on their heads until the uterus fell back into position.

Preventative advice that was handed out at the time consisted of “keep still for a long time, avoid constipation, never let the bladder become too full and live single.”

Masturbation was implicated also as a possible cause. “Certain vicious and degrading habits, in young persons, are apt to produce these difficulties, by the continual irritation they keep up, and so are certain excesses in adults.”

The least appealing cure of all was galvanism, where a tube was inserted into the vagina and connected to one pole of a battery with the other being placed on the spine, or the application of leeches to the vaginal lips if there were a cystocele present.

need the nurse remind you yet again to keep doing those kegel exercises?